But the Chargers tight end isn't happy about the prospect of a less-than-full Qualcomm Stadium, either.

"It’s unfortunate. You want to think that you have true fans as a player. It’s crazy that it’s hard to sell out a Monday Night game," Gates said Thursday. "I don't know what that's due to."

Gates is paid to catch passes, not sell tickets. Others Chargers employs price, marekt and sell the tickets, and the fans buy them or don't buy them. If not enough are sold, the telecast will be blacked out in San Diego. It's been 13 years since a Monday Night Football telecast was blacked out anywhere.

After six years without a blackout, Chargers fans lost six local telecasts in the last three seasons. When four of the blackouts came last year, I posited that the Chargers may have priced the stadium experience out of the range of a telling number of fans. According to the Team Marketing Report's survey of NFL pricing, the Chargers' fan experience for a family of four was the seventh-most expensive in the league at $466.20 per game.

The team adjusted its ticket prices for this season -- some went down, some went up. Also, the Chargers decided not to imitate the Raiders and tarp off some sections in the upper deck. In February, club spokesman Bill Johnston explained the no-tarp decision.

“We just lowered the price of 10,000 season seats in an effort to help fill the stadium and enhance our homefield advantage,” Johnston told me via email. “Combine the lower price with one of the most attractive and competitive home schedules in memory and we’re optimistic about our chances.”

Johnston made two solid points: a full stadium enhances homefield advantage, and this year's home schedule is attractive. Actually, the visiting opponents may be more intriguing now than when the schedule came out, given the fast starts of the Chiefs, Colts and Broncos.

Still, did the Chargers size up and engage their customers as well as possible?

Gratitude for fan support and the desire for a loud home crowd have been consistent talking points from new head coach Mike McCoy in media interviews. A full house in San Diego, he has said, is one of the noisier crowds in the NFL. The last time the Chargers reached the playoffs, in January 2009, a shrill pro-Bolts crowd impressed the Colts traveling party that included Tom Telesco.

Like everyone else, Gates can't nail down the leading cause of insufficient ticket sales. "I really don’t have a lot of input on it because my main concern is about preparing for the Colts, doing the things that I can do to help us get ready to win a football game," he said.

But he can appreciate how crowd noise can limit a visiting team's communication and add to a home team's emotional fuel.

"It gives you a little bit of motivation when fans come out and cheer for you and it’s a full house," he said. "We like to call it that 12th man on the field. If that’s not the case, we’ve still got to go play the football game. We hope we can get enough ticket sales for people to cheer us on.”